1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a stacker for stacking a plurality of cards to be issued in a desired order.
2. Description of the Related Art
All airlines operate a boarding procedure for departing flights, and issue the required number of boarding passes to passengers by means of a boarding pass issuing device. The boarding passes each include flight information comprising the flight number, flight departure time passenger seat number, the passenger's name, and other details.
In the case of a conventional boarding pass issuing device, a continuous form is cut at fixed intervals, the relevant flight information being printed on the front surface of each cut form, and a printed card being conveyed to a container as a boarding pass. When a given set of boarding passes is printed, the boarding passes are stacked sequentially in a container such that the front of each one faces the back of the one immediately preceding it. The boarding passes are removed from the container after the final one of the set has been conveyed thereto. The order of the boarding passes is designated by the user, i.e., the airline, in seat number order, such as from the lowest to the highest seat number, as shown in FIG. 1, or, as is shown in FIG. 2, from the highest to the lowest seat number. In FIGS. 1 and 2, the seat numbers are indicated as SN1, SN2, . . . SNn.
Recently, the passenger counter is, in some cases, shared by some air companies, each using the counter for some time for its departure flight. In this case, the boarding passes issuing device has to supply both demands of order from small to large number of seat and of order from large to small number of seat. The memory incorporated in the conventional boarding passes issuing device stores a plurality of flight data items supplied from a host computer of each air company, and these data items are read from the memory in the order the boarding passes have been designated, and are printed on the boarding passes.
The above-mentioned memory needs to have sufficient memory capacity large enough to store all needed flight information. Further, since printing process starts after the all flight information supplied from the host computer is stored in the memory, a long time is required for preparing the printing, in comparison with the case where the printing process is achieved directly according to each flight information supplied from the host computer.